February 16, 2000

KOSOVO
AND PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

It
has been almost a year since our "humanitarian" bombers unleashed their vengeance
on the former Yugoslavia, a year since the War for Ethnic Diversity claimed
its first victims  and what have we got to show for it? Well, let's see:
150,000 Serb refugees, ethnically cleansed out of their homes in the former
Yugoslavian province of Kosovo: at least 1,200 killed by the Kosovo Liberation
Army, and thousands more wounded; an emerging one-party dictatorship ruled over
by narco-terrorists, in which no one, regardless of ethnicity, is safe. According
to the information I have managed to gather, including from unofficial sources
inside Kosovo and official UN records, since June 12, 1999, there have been
3,688 terrorist attacks. Of these, 3,630 were committed against civilians: 3,433
against Serbs and Montenegrins, 87 against Albanians, and 110 against members
of other nationalities, such as the Roma (Gypsies).

REIGN
OF TERROR

This
reign of terror is not overlooked by the Western media. Instead, it is excused
and even celebrated: the over 1200 Serbs abducted and since the "liberation"
are routinely described as victims of "revenge killings"  as if their
murderers were merely instruments of justice, however rough, and therefore somehow
admirable. What has happened to Kosovo since the great "victory" brings to mind
a famous Weekly Standard editorial that gleefully anticipated how we
would get to "crush Serb skulls"  if only Clinton would listen to Bill
Kristol (and Hillary) and start bombing. Kristol's wish has come true. Certainly
Hillary say can that her husband didn't let her down this time. The skulls of
Serbs are literally being crushed by the mobs that encircle them if they even
so much as speak Serbo-Croatian in the streets of Pristina  as several
unfortunates, including a few foreigners, discovered soon after "liberation."
Are you happy, Bill?

REIGN
OF ERROR

The
number of murdered and missing Serbs, to date, is 1,282  more than half
the total number of bodies found in Kosovo's much-touted "mass graves." The
NATO-crats, you remember, initially claimed that the Serbs were engaged in a
program of "genocide." At the height of the war hysteria, CNN and other news
outlets were routinely reporting claims of 100,000-plus Kosovars killed at the
hands of "Milosevic's willing executioners." This was halved before the last
bombs fell on Belgrade, and further revised downward to 10,000. To date, the
exhumation of these alleged "mass graves" has yielded a little over 2,000 bodies,
total  including Serbs, Gypsies, and others considered enemies
by the KLA. This is the Kosovar "holocaust" descried by the "humanitarian" saviors
of the Balkans and their brainwashed supporters.

SO
WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

While
most of Kosovo is ethnically cleansed of Serbs, they persist in the north, the
site of their most sacred and ancient shrines, and it is there that the battle
lines have formed. The city of Mitrovica has become a Serbian Alamo, with the
Kosovar majority moving on the last Serb neighborhoods, held back by French
troops  who found themselves under Albanian sniper fire the other day.
The "peacekeepers" arrested some 46 residents of Mitrovica, 45 Albanians and
a lone Serb. But don't worry, we'll get around to the Serbs soon enough: "Yesterday
was a bad day for the Albanians," said Mario Morcone, Mitrovica's UN overseer,
"but that will not be all." So what else is new? The crimes of the KLA against
the Serbian minority have so far been carried out with the full acquiescence
of NATO's army of occupation. As their forensic investigators comb Kosovo for
scant evidence of a "genocide" that was said to have victimized tens of thousands,
the NATO-crats are presiding over the creation of an ethnically pure Kosovo
state  the government of which is now beginning to assert itself.

READING
BETWEEN THE LINES

The
New York Timesdescribed
the lament of the French general whose troops were caught in the crossfire:
"General de Saquui de Sannes, who has blamed the violence on both sides, said
individuals were instigating attacks purposely to escalate the violence and
to destroy the last multiethnic town in Kosovo where Serbs and Albanians are
living side by side, if uneasily." But what can this mean in the context of
a Kosovo almost entirely "cleansed" of Serbs? If "extremists" are determined
"to destroy the last multiethnic town in Kosovo," then surely the General must
mean Albanian extremists, for they are in power and in the majority. He confesses
he is "worried that we may be in the process of an escalation of intolerance."
On whose part, he does not say  but clearly only one ethnic faction in
Kosovo is in a position to exhibit intolerance, and that is the Party of Intolerance
itself, known as the KLA.

THE
PROVOCATEURS

Founded
by student visionaries who combined the doctrines of Albanian Communist dictator
Enver Hoxha with a homegrown pan-Albanian messianism, the KLA has never moderated
its program of ethnic particularism and militant expansionism. In Mitrovica,
these two themes merge seamlessly and logically. As they launch a campaign to
drive the last of the Serbs out of the country, the KLA also hopes to provoke
Milosevic and the hardliners in Belgrade  and the north is the most likely
battleground. Using NATO as a shield, KLA provocations will play a key role
in the next war, just as they did in the last:.

A
PAUSE FOR STATION IDENTIFICATION

From
the NATO-crats' point of view, this is far preferable to contending with the
militant Albanians in the streets of Pristina. In the face of a KLA insurrection
against NATO, the only alternative is to turn that anger and violence outward,
against Milosevic and away from NATO. The only way to delay the inevitable
clamor for Kosovo's formal declaration of independence and the consolidation
of the KLA dictatorship is for the NATO-crats to go on to phase two of the war
 which did not end with the signing of a cease-fire but only paused long
enough for the US to elect a new Hegemon-in-chief.

COMPLAINT
DEPARTMENT

As
US sanctions bite deeply into Serbian flesh this bitterly cold winter, and yet
another regional player  Austria  is demonized and isolated, the
next President of the United States will have a great deal to do with whether
or not the developing crisis explodes into war. And this brings me to a subject
that occasionally comes up in letters, especially recently, which is why I spend
so much time analyzing American politics. This usually comes from leftists,
and all too many "libertarians" (i.e. free market leftists), who chafe at my
praise for Pat Buchanan's noninterventionism, praise they find entirely too
effusive. After all, what does presidential politics have to do with foreign
affairs?

HEAVY
ON THE ITALICS

The
obvious answer is: everything. The usurpation of the power to make war,
reserved to Congress by the Constitution, has swelled the American presidency
into an office far more exalted and powerful than that of any Roman Emperor.
Compared to the original Caligula, the depraved aggressor who presently inhabits
the White House exhibits his bloodlust on a far grander scale 
a world scale. When we elect the President of the United States we are
really electing the Emperor of the World. This is the job that John McCain
is applying for, and if that doesn't concern everyone who fears another
war, then what will?

THE
McCAIN THREAT

McCain
has repeatedly said that he thought the Kosovo war ended too soon, that the
US should have gone in and "finished the job"  presumably by occupying
Belgrade and subjugating the entire country. Determined to avenge the nagging
defeat of Vietnam, and caught up in his own megalomanic myth, President McCain
would have us in a shooting war in the Balkans within months of his inauguration
 and don't think he would stop there.

LET
HISTORY JUDGE

What
fascinates me is the complete and utter silence on the vital matter of foreign
policy in this presidential election: in spite of all that has happened, the
endless interventions of the Clinton era and the ongoing carnage in Kosovo,
we hear not a peep of criticism from the so-called "insurgents." Bradley, the
alleged liberal, who strives to be a latter day Adlai Stevenson, says not a
word of criticism about the starvation tens of thousands of Iraqi children due
to US-UN sanctions. This humanitarian  and profoundly human 
gesture is left to "archconservative" Pat Buchanan. Documenting this inversion,
this role-reversal on the question of war and peace in the age of globalization,
is surely a major theme of this column, and reporting on this exciting new development
is central to what Antiwar.com is all about. Hopefully this will suffice to
answer some of my critics (who I thank for writing, and giving me material for
a column). If not, then we shall have to let history judge whether or not American
politics is the primary battlefield on which the fate of the world is decided.

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